SolarWinds majority owners Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo sold US$286 million of stock just before the company announced a new CEO and disclosed a cyberattack.
The private equity firms disposed of more than 13 million SolarWinds stock shares at US$21.97 per share on Dec. 7, two days before the IT infrastructure management firm announced Pulse Secure’s Sudhakar Ramakrishna as its next CEO. Four days after that, SolarWinds disclosed that it had experienced a highly sophisticated, manual supply chain attack on certain versions of its Orion network monitoring product.
SolarWinds’ stock is now trading at US$18.46, nearly 16 percent lower than what Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo sold their shares for. Silver Lake sold 5.8 percent of its stake in publicly held SolarWinds for US$157.5 million, while Thoma Bravo also sold 5.8 percent of its somewhat smaller stake in SolarWinds for US$128.3 million. The stock sales were first reported late Tuesday evening by The Washington Post.
$286M Of SolarWinds Stock Sold Before CEO, Hack Disclosures
Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo said they weren’t aware of the cyberattack at the time of the sale, but didn’t respond to questions about whether they knew Sudhakar Ramakrishna had been selected as SolarWinds’ next CEO. By Michael Novinson December 16, 2020, 12:45 PM EST
SolarWinds majority owners Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo sold $286 million of stock just before the company announced a new CEO and disclosed a cyberattack.
The private equity firms disposed of more than 13 million SolarWinds stock shares at $21.97 per share on Dec. 7, two days before the IT infrastructure management firm announced Pulse Secure’s Sudhakar Ramakrishna as its next CEO. Four days after that, SolarWinds disclosed that it had experienced a highly sophisticated, manual supply chain attack on certain versions of its Orion network monitoring product.
Investors in breached software firm SolarWinds traded $280 million in stock days before hack was revealed
Drew Harwell and Douglas MacMillan, The Washington Post
Dec. 15, 2020
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Top investors in SolarWinds, the Texas-based company whose software was breached in a major Russian cyberattack, sold millions of dollars in stock in the days before the intrusion was revealed.
The timing of the trades raises questions about whether the investors used inside information to avoid major losses related to the attack. SolarWinds s share price has plunged about 22% since the company disclosed its role in the breach Sunday night.
On Dec. 8, the cybersecurity firm FireEye announced that hackers had broken into its servers and stolen sensitive security-testing tools as part of a breach they d discovered in recent weeks. FireEye determined by Friday that SolarWinds s updates had been corrupted and contacted the company shortly after, according to people familiar with the matt